Are druids nerfs really that bad?

[Crashdummy]

So with upcoming WG nerf 20% reduce healing and increased CD by 2 secs with Glyph. Does this make druids TOTALLY WORTHLESS? A friend is having a heart attack about this and claiming druids are garbage now? I tried healing a new 5 man heroic on the PTR and it was mindless rejuv everyone, LBx3 tank and spam WG every CD. Regrowth or Swiftmend if they hit less then 50%. Never druid healed but it seemed to be a no brainer. I never ran out of mana and I could hot every person in the group up even if they were full. It was almost like a little game Rejuv,WG,Regrowth and keep 3LB's on the tank all at once.

Nerf seemed small to me druids need to do something other than instant casts. Buff RG,Nourish or Healing touch where they have some value I guess. But yet again my question is are druids viable after patch?

Tell your friend to roll a resto shaman to heal less than with his nerfed druid and instead of having a great cd like tranquility he will have a crappy cd that requires people to be stacked withint a 10 yard circle which is spirit link totem.

He will come back to heal with his druid in no time.

---------- Post added 2011-10-06 at 10:59 AM ----------

Lay on Hands is a healing spell, so that's 5.

So its tranquility... but both are counted as CDs not healing spells.

[Madhoof]

You really have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. It's a bit depressing, honestly. Have you never heard of ancestral healing? Of spirit link totem? Please, don't talk about topics you don't even remotely understand. All it does is spread misinformation and dilute the conversation with absolute nonsense. Of course shamans bring a lot more than just HPS. Every single one of their spell crits reduces the damage the player takes. That's huge.

This is the tooltip for ancestral healing: Reduces your target's physical damage taken by 10% for 15 sec after receiving a critical effect from one of your healing spells. On a tank, that's up pretty much all the time.

Paladins don't have more cooldowns than healing spells btw. Have you ever played a paladin healer?

Regarding what you said, you shouldn't say that other ppl don't know what they're talking about, since the poster you quotet was actually right with every word he/she wrote. The only thing I don't share with the opinion you quotet, is that the nerfs we know now will put the druid in the role shamans are now since they're to little for that.

But the qunitessence of that post is just true. But I guess Seriss discussed this already enough

[Deleted]

No, the nerf won't make us useless. People might rather take Holy Priests after 4.3 but in my personal case it isn't gonna change things (except for the glyph probably).

[Crashdummy]

I'm just going to answer to that part.

Were you there in t11? Because that nerf is pretty much making resto druids go back to their t11 status, which was to be benched on every fight that required even a little bit of burst healing (aoe or single target). And at the same time, every other healing class/spec is getting buffed.

Now sure, wg should be nerfed a bit, and it's too easy to use for the healing it does. But then they should make it harder to use, or make it have some synergy with other spells so that, if you just smash your wg button on cd you won't get the full effect.

I'm not personally affected by the nerf since I raid as moonkin, but I was resto for most of t11, and it would sadden me to see resto druid go back to this state. Because it really wasn't fun, and trying to quickly heal the raid after some big aoe damage was a nightmare...

PS: your druid gets praised for his high hps because people in your raid have no clue how healing works.

Yeah i was in t11, where shamans were merely mana betteries and in some encounter resto shamans were actually there to DPS in normal phases and OFF HEAL in hard healing phases. That's how crap resto shamans were, and druids in t11 were MILLONS TIMES BETTER HEALER THAN RESTO SHAMANS.

Now, you werent the worst healer in t11, and then t12 comes and BAM, you are the best raid healers. Meanwhile resto shamans continue to be the worst healers (although better than in t11 due to some buffs).

So, if you are a resto druid and you cry, then you deserve to be a resto shaman to watch how druids tear you apart without even trying.

[Hokuto]

PS: your druid gets praised for his high hps because people in your raid have no clue how healing works.

The healing community is becoming as dumb as damage dealers, it's all down to HPS nowadays. When you see a druid 2k hps over you, you don't remember that your Aura Mastery/PW:B/GS saved the raid because it's not shown as absolute numbers. You just want to match that HPS, because it's clearly an accurate indicator of how good you are.

Everything a druid/shaman does is raw, tangible. You can see, you can measure and the WoL parse will show quite clearly. Now, remember the first guilds doing H Beth/Rhyo and how PW:B single-handedly gave them the kill? It's a colossal cooldown that people barely remember until a new encounter borderline enforces its usage, because it won't show up anywhere but in video kills for 10s.

Like I said, T13 is the tier of cooldowns, at least it should be on heroic. As it stands right now, druids and shamans are on the back of the bus for 4.3 because "healing harder" isn't always enough, and that's all we can provide. If all the classes' hps is the same, why are you bringing anything but a priest/paladin? Flavor? A battle-res? Overlapping buffs like melee haste and Inspiration?

I'm on a 10-man doing H Rag attempts (like everyone else) walking into 4.3 with a druid (me) / shaman comp. It's like an announced tragedy, another train wreck.

[Serrafinlol]

All I see is a ton of speculation without any hard facts. You are crazy if you think Druids are going to be garbage. We will continue to put forth at the very minimum competitive numbers. A Holy priest/Rdruid healing comp will have amazing synergy. If anyone should be worried it would be resto shaman, although the few we have put forth very competitive numbers and don't stand in fire so they are often brought to new encounters. Stop complaining about the class and play well and I am sure your raid team will have no issues bringing you along.

[Tharkkun]

I bet more than half of that 20% WG nerf is all overhealing anyways. The best druid healers ranked have 25-40% overheal from WG so you're wasting HPS as it is.

[Deleted]

Everytime a class is even the slightest nerfed, people WILL say that they are worthless.

Trust me, I will still be able to heal like a fucking BAWS even with these nerfs in place.

The only saying that they'll be worthless, are worthless players.

And no, druids won't be sat out in major progress guilds.

[Narrax]

Stop complaining about the class and play well and I am sure your raid team will have no issues bringing you along.

^^^This. Unless its a really gimmicky fight, like Baleroc where its pretty much just tank healing, any class will perform well as long as the comp is good (I wouldn't bring two R-druids or R-shamans to a 10man...but then again I wouldn't want two Holy Pallies alone either).

The only time a certain class/spec is really sat is during world first kills and the such. After a few weeks of running the instance and clearing the Farm bosses, gear would pretty much outweigh any advantage/disadvantage of bring/sitting a certain class/spec, and the only excuse after that is really execution/skill based.

[Kenny2813]

the difference between the nerf in T11 and the nerf in t13 is that we are a lot more geared and we scale a lot better with gear because we dont depend on spirit as much as the other healers.

I do believe that we will have enough throughput to have us as a viable option because with how it sounds it seems like there will be a lot of aoe damage going out and thats what we are best at

I think what worries druids is now that holy priests will be able to do everything they will have an amazing raid cd, an amazing tank cd, good direct heals, spammable aoe, and damage reduction.

Our nerfs should put it closer to a situation of bring the player not the class.

[Toroc]

Yep, shamans bring such a lot of useful things to a raid that shamans are the first to warm the bench as soon as content gets challenging in Cataclysm. Do I really have to list all the shaman issues? Believe me, a shaman will NEVER steal your raid spot. Never. Never. N.E.V.E.R. We simply can't compete with a druid. Not in a thousand years. Not with a million buffs for us and a million nerfs for you - if both classes should remain playable and halfway balanced in the grander scheme of things.

Seriously, I think it's you who has no idea what they're talking about.

Ancestral Healing = Inspiration. A disc priest is a better healer all around than a shaman, brings more CDs and utility and can keep up -10% physical damage taken just as easily. On anybody else but a tank, this buff is absolutely useless. So I think that you're praising it a tad too much with your wording of "every single one of their crits reduces damage taken!" If only that were as good as you're making it sound on paper. And I'm leaving aside the issue with many bosses doing a lot of magic-based attacks that Inspiration will do nothing for.

Spirit Link is btw extremely useless when a raid is spread out, as is practically ALL the healing a shaman can do. Healing Rain isn't large enough for that kind of encounter, and chain heal's jump range makes effective raid-healing a gamble. So unless you're assigned to "Seriss, you'll take care of the melees because that's all you can do effectively anyway - btw, your class sucks and you're only here because we have no other healing class on the stand-by list", you're entirely out of options. And since I don't have a totemic trap launcher, I can use my spirit link totem as a toothpick most of the time.

Sorry, but druids really have no reason at all to complain. Our druid gets praises upon praises for his high hps, and is never ever benched. And that won't change. Because if he loses 3k potential hps, he'll still be way ahead of the holy paladin and the disc priest who in turn will be ahead of any of our by now totally depressed and dutifully bench-warming shaman healers who only get to raid because our healing roster has diminished extremely badly (would you be motivated when the amount of healers in a heroic raid is rendered an utter and complete minimum, effectively only barely allowing half of your roster to participate? It's not surprising that so many people quit). Of course, since my guild has now downed Ragnaros on 10 man instead of our usual unsuccessful 25-man tries (if a raid took place at all, that is... for lack of attendance by various key classes), I have little faith that shamans will get their kill and title any time soon. I even suspect that alts will be preferred over mains when it comes to the healer setup. An alt druid is still more valuable than a main shaman. I firmly believe that alt druids, alt priests and alt holypaladins will rather find a spot on a 10-man heroic Ragnaros re-kill than a shaman. For the simple reason that it's simply less of a hassle. At least for the next month or two. And eventually someone will pity the darkblue guys that always sit in group 6 and try to get them into the line-up. It will be painful, it will involve a lot of flaming and bitching about why you can't do this and that as well as this and that other class and why it doesn't work out that well and where the heck did you blow all your mana. And when he finally keels over and dies, you'll only feel relief that you finally did it and can't even be really happy because you know that even though you gave it everything you could, it was just barely enough, and that you were basically carried the last few steps.

I've been playing my shaman long enough to have seen very similar situations all throughout WotLK already. It's basically where shaman is constantly at when raids reach the vicinity of a challenging endboss of a tier.

So I can't even whine when I'm benched, because sadly enough, I understand that I cannot heal as well as a druid, mitigate as well as a disc priest or last as long as a paladin.

Shamans don't need cheering up by a druid who doesn't seem to know much about how a shaman integrates into a raid and tries to make shaman seem so much better than they are only so they get sympathy for getting nerfed. For as insignificant as my opinion on this matter is: I don't want to see you nerfed. Seriously. I don't want to see anybody getting nerfed. It just makes things harder for my raid when a class gets nerfed. The last thing I want is for a raid to have a harder time only because someone cried "Nerf this!!!" I would rather be thrown a few crumbs, a few minuscule tiny quality of life adjustments, so I'm not totally overshadowed by the popularity of the holy trinity that is holy paladin, disc priest and resto druid.

Now, this post was definitely longer than the short correction that I actually wanted to write in order to correct that nonsense about shaman is a danger to druid raidspots because of all the stuff they bring to a raid.

This is from a shaman to a druid: You'll always have a raid spot because you bring such a lot of utility, longevity and mobility to a raid. You are without competition. Not even a buffed holy priest will be able to touch you. Don't be scared. You'll not be walking in shaman's horseshoes anytime soon.

This. Resto druids will still own ther healing platform. Lol 20% is maybe my WG overhealing. /shrug

[willyhog]

The healing community is becoming as dumb as damage dealers, it's all down to HPS nowadays. When you see a druid 2k hps over you, you don't remember that your Aura Mastery/PW:B/GS saved the raid because it's not shown as absolute numbers. You just want to match that HPS, because it's clearly an accurate indicator of how good you are.

Except when people say HPS they mean an aggregate of absorbs and healing, so PW:B would be factored into that, would it not?
This actually reinforces the arguments druids (including me) have about the upcoming WG nerf-- what cooldowns do we bring to a raid other than Tranq and ToL? None. Why, then, are druids brought to raids? Well, obviously because of our extremely high throughput. So, given your premise that "it's all down to HPS nowadays," (which it always was anyway), what would you have druids do? Grow a couple extra CD's? What we bring to a raid is our AoE throughput to keep pressure off the tank healers and to stabilize the raid after damage spikes, and we've been recognized as having those abilities for quite a while now. Blizzard's answer to the complaint that druids have high HPS, which is really our only saving grace other than our mobility, is to nerf our HPS, and not give us any CD in return.
Now, I agree that the HPS that WG brings given its ease of use is relatively high, and I agree that WG itself (JUST WG), needs a nerf. But to answer the victory cries of all the other healing classes for this "deserved" nerf, this is NOT the answer to bring druids in line with other classes. Give us a tank CD. Give us an absorb. Give us anything-- but do not take the one thing that makes us viable.


Shamans have bad HPS though, lol. They need a buff.

[Deleted]

Except when people say HPS they mean an aggregate of absorbs and healing, so PW:B would be factored into that, would it not?

Nope, PW:B does not show on logs - nor do things like the 10% damage reduction from grace, the damage prevented by Aura Mastery etc etc. Other abosrbs like PW:Shield do tho.

[dabanks07]

It makes me sick to read a bunch of these QQ druid posts. How can you say Tranq isn't a cooldown, it is only a regular healing spell? Are you kidding me? The absolutely insane healing it does when active makes it one of the more powerful raid CDs out there. The only time Tranquility would not function as a CD would be in a situation where the entire raid was one-shot which means you evidently screwed something up anyway. To compare it to Spirit Link Totem is a joke. 10% reduced damage for 6 seconds is hardly even noticable (less than half of a Power Word: Barrier) and after the change to make the distribution of damage non-resistable you can throw out any argument of it healing. With only a 10 yard radius you can only use it when you are stacked, i.e. Beth p2, Rhyo p2, Domo Scorpion phase, etc, where everyone is being damaged for the same amount anyway rendering the distribution completely useless. Go raid on a Restoration Shaman and then come back and tell me that Restoration Druids are just in such a terrible place. The WG nerf will be made up for by the haste from t13 gear. Most druids now go for the 2005 haste breakpoint giving them a 9 tick WG. Heroic T12 (ilvl 391) best in slot gear allows for over 3000 haste as it is and with it shaping up to look like the normal mode t13 gear will be ilvl 397, the 10th WG tick seems like it might be in reach before t13 heroic modes.

[Deleted]

Yes, shamans have a lot of problems and need to be buffed, we get that. You and all the other shamans that somehow got lost on a druid thread made it perfectly clear.

But how is nerfing resto druids improving your situation exactly? I guess instead of getting benched in favor of disc priests, holy paladins and resto druids, you'll be benched in favor of disc priests, holy paladins and holy priests. Oh yeah, much better.

[Deleted]

I think we all agree on WG needing some kind of nerf.
I think the 20% is a fine nerf - It's still 10% better than the start of Cataclysm.
But the glyph is what bugs me and alot of others. It's really a huge nerf to WG, with the extra 2 seconds cooldown.

Why don't they make it on par with Glyph of Circle of Healing? It hits 1 more target and costs 20% more mana.

Cause the WG glyph is useless really, and we got no major glyph to make up for it! Regrowth?! What a shitty alternative.

Make a new major - Glyph of Tranquility:
When the druid channels Tranquility all affected targets take 10% less damage.

It would be a nice alternative. Why?

It won't be overpowered for PvP, nor for PvE.
We don't get a new raid CD, but we'll have a stronger raid CD.

---------- Post added 2011-10-07 at 08:26 AM ----------

This. Resto druids will still own ther healing platform. Lol 20% is maybe my WG overhealing. /shrug

It's the glyph that sucks big time, my friend. The glyph!

[Chronnos]

I PvE heal on both a resto sham and a resto druid and tbh it sometimes feels like druids need a 30% nerf in healing done to be on par with the shamans (throughput/mana ratio is insane for druids). I'm just saying, there's quite the gap, especially cause of the druid's mobility and the shaman's clucky AoE healing mechanics. So some nerfs are absolutely normal imo.

[Sikizim]

typical knee-jerk nerf reactions.

Go to world of logs 25m Heroic top hps logs and then explain why resto druids didnt need nerfing.

Just to add for lazy people :P This is counting the amount of druids on all 7 bosses top 10 HPS logs:

10M: 53/70
10H: 47/70
25M: 50/70
25H: 47/70

between 67-75% of all of the best healing log performances are resto druids lol.

[dabanks07]

Yes, shamans have a lot of problems and need to be buffed, we get that. You and all the other shamans that somehow got lost on a druid thread made it perfectly clear.

But how is nerfing resto druids improving your situation exactly? I guess instead of getting benched in favor of disc priests, holy paladins and resto druids, you'll be benched in favor of disc priests, holy paladins and holy priests. Oh yeah, much better.

My point is the nerf is being overblown. You are going to gain over half of your 20% nerf back from receiving an extra tick on your WG, not to mention the extra tick of Efflorescence at the same number and the obtainable Rejuvenation. If you look on WorldofLogs at the Restoration Druid Heroic Ragnaros parses, you will see that Wild Growth alone is consistently over 30% of their healing. If you add in Efflorescence and Rejuvenation you are looking at over 60% of Druid healing that will be gaining an extra tick from the haste on new gear. That could very possibly make things even more imbalanced than they currently are if Blizzard did not step in. Just for the heck of it lets do a quick take on the math. Wild Growth and Efflorescence going from 9 to 10 ticks buffs each of them by ~11%. Rejuvenation going from 5 ticks to 6 results in a 20% increase. Going with Wild Growth at 30% of healing and factoring both of those in leaves you with a Wild Growth doing ~26.4% of your healing. Putting Efflorescence at 15% healing and buffing it 11% leaves you at 16.5% and taking Rejuvenation, averaging around 20% of healing, and buffing it 20% makes it 24. For the parses in question those 3 affected spells would go from 65% of overall healing to 66.9% healing. Now yes this is a very specific example and the gearing environment will be different as you lose the mastery and crit to reach those points but the point I am trying to make is that while it is a nerf, I do not think that it will be nearly as gamebreaking as people are making it out to be.

[Rootlicious]

Wow look at that typical dps reaction to logs... What does it take for people to realize every single thing we bring to a raid shows up on the meters. look one thing you aren't going to find on a meter is the amount of damage aura mastery, PW: B, Pain sub, hand of sacrifice inspiration/ancestral healing PREVENTED~ which is something a druid has no ability all we have is good ole throughput so guess what heavy raid damage know what we have for it? throughput, which we don't have burst throughput to boot which puts us at a disadvantage if its random spikes on people, but back to the heavy raid damage say pally is told to use AM for it which makes it more manageable but doesn't show up on the meters what it prevented, but say a druid is told to tranq while it is a nice way to patch up low members before they get hit by something else it DOES show up on the meters which puts us just that much ahead of other classes on the meters. In return for this and just the simple mechanic of hots puts us a decent bit ahead of other healers which in return gets some people here QQing about how "more" a druid heals and get enough of this and you get a mindless nerf